GO Transit: Service thread (including extensions)

[crs1026]

On this part, I will partially disagree; I maintain that the O/L should have been buried in this section, which would have avoided the need to eliminate Lakeshore East Express services and 15 minute weekday service for more than 4 years.

I don't disagree with your wish to have buried the O/L, but I suspect that the net result of building the accesses to that tunnel, plus the widening of the GO corridor, plus the East Harbour station, might have necessitated track shifts and a period of only two tracks anyways.

Additionally, I remain concerned by the non-OL portion of the corridor being limited to 4 tracks, this means VIA will not have an exclusive track, which in light of projected GO service levels by the 2030s will likely represent capacity constraints.

There is a real need to plan a regional service beyond Durham. The downgraded VIA service post HFR is not going to adequately serve Port Hope, Cobourg, and beyond..... thinking that CN will suddenly embrace this service once HxR removes the Ottawa-Montreal traffic, or that a downgraded service will perform well on CN tracks, is a real mistake imho. Ontario (or Ottawa) needs to be building out capacity east of Liverpool to begin this expansion. If people are going to argue for the Province to assume intercity service west of Toronto, the same case could be made for Toronto-Kingston.... which is said to become a terminal point on a "hub" model anyways.

The big mistake ML is making is the flat junction at Scarborough Jct, which greatly complicates the potential for any express movements on LSE, be they GO or VIA, once the Stouffville line frequency is increased and Bowmanville comes on line. My fear is that the return of express trains just won't happen as expected. Four tracks would be quite sufficient if a proper configuration were built..... the cost of the Scarborough Jct grade separation would be even less than the cost of that buried ML line.

- Paul

 

[Northern Light]

I don't disagree with your wish to have buried the O/L, but I suspect that the net result of building the accesses to that tunnel, plus the widening of the GO corridor, plus the East Harbour station, might have necessitated track shifts and a period of only two tracks anyways.

Doubtless, if we chose to keep East Harbour as a hub, there would have been some in-corridor work, but surely for a much shorter period of time. Additionally, this leaves the residual rail corridor with considerably more potential capacity.

There is a real need to plan a regional service beyond Durham. The downgraded VIA service post HFR is not going to adequately serve Port Hope, Cobourg, and beyond..... thinking that CN will suddenly embrace this service once HxR removes the Ottawa-Montreal traffic, or that a downgraded service will perform well on CN tracks, is a real mistake imho. Ontario (or Ottawa) needs to be building out capacity east of Liverpool to begin this expansion. If people are going to argue for the Province to assume intercity service west of Toronto, the same case could be made for Toronto-Kingston.... which is said to become a terminal point on a "hub" model anyways.

The big mistake ML is making is the flat junction at Scarborough Jct, which greatly complicates the potential for any express movements on LSE, be they GO or VIA, once the Stouffville line frequency is increased and Bowmanville comes on line. My fear is that the return of express trains just won't happen as expected. Four tracks would be quite sufficient if a proper configuration were built..... the cost of the Scarborough Jct grade separation would be even less than the cost of that buried ML line.

- Paul

I agree entirely w/this part. But would add, capacity beyond Liverpool is not the only constraint. Capacity in the core is a constraint.

 

[Sunnyside]

Doubtless, if we chose to keep East Harbour as a hub, there would have been some in-corridor work, but surely for a much shorter period of time. Additionally, this leaves the residual rail corridor with considerably more potential capacity.



I agree entirely w/this part. But would add, capacity beyond Liverpool is not the only constraint. Capacity in the core is a constraint.

Out of curiosity, what would be the options to increase capacity in the core? I know Metrolinx has studied various 'Union bypasses' and such, but those seem to have been rolled into the Ontario Line, functionally at least. Even if the Don Branch is reactivated/Bala Sub becomes more heavily used in the core, that doesn't really address the USRC either, assuming that's what we are talking about here.

I don't really see how additional capacity could be added without seriously breaking the bank, so have the capacity constraints forecasted gotten worse since last looked at? I imagine that GO Expansion+ any HxR service will be pushing Union and the corridor to its limits, never mind additional express services and VIA 'hub' services... but I am a bit out of my depth.

 

[Northern Light]

Out of curiosity, what would be the options to increase capacity in the core? I know Metrolinx has studied various 'Union bypasses' and such, but those seem to have been rolled into the Ontario Line, functionally at least. Even if the Don Branch is reactivated/Bala Sub becomes more heavily used in the core, that doesn't really address the USRC either, assuming that's what we are talking about here.

Well, I stated that in the context of the capacity the O/L removes from the rail corridor (two tracks worth) .

That decision is essentially made now.

It wouldn't be impossible to bury the O/L in the future, but it would cost more than it would have originally, and it would be disruptive (the O/L would have to shut down at some point for new connections to be made, at the very least for a couple of weeks, but potentially for several months)

The projected cost for the Leslieville portion to be buried was 800M, I think a complex exercise to do that post-hoc would likely cost at least twice as much, if not triple.

To be clear, I do not see this happening and I'm not advocating for it. Its just a shame we did this wrong.

I don't really see how additional capacity could be added without seriously breaking the bank, so have the capacity constraints forecasted gotten worse since last looked at? I imagine that GO Expansion+ any HxR service will be pushing Union and the corridor to its limits, never mind additional express services and VIA 'hub' services... but I am a bit out of my depth.

Aside from the above, the key opportunities would be removing storage tracks at the yards east and west of Union in favour of throughput capacity, and building a more robust than currently planned station at Spadina and Front to try and divert some riders.

This creates some hassles for GO, but is probably a sensible move in the medium term. There is sufficient capacity (or will be once O/L construction is done) for the near term. The real concern is the mid 2030s and beyond.

 

[Bureaucromancer]

This whole six track line of thought really emphasizes the inappropriateness of a 413 route for a CP bypass. HFR or no, VIA will need to come down the Don Valley at some point, which damn near requires a solution for getting freight off the whole of the midtown corridor.

 

[nfitz]

VIA will need to come down the Don Valley at some point, which damn near requires a solution for getting freight off the whole of the midtown corridor.

I believe there's lots of room for an extra track.

Assuming that service is through Peterborough, and doesn't continue along Lake Ontario.

 

[crs1026]

A properly-signalled four or five track mainline can pump in all the trains that GO or VIA can muster for the next decade or two.. As noted, the platform capacity at Union may be the more limiting factor some day..... as is the reduction to three tracks at Scarborough Jct and then two tracks at Durham Jct.
One assumes that HFR will take the Don route, but it's reasonable to anticipate that local service on LSE might some day reach headways of 5 minutes, and express trains might reach a headway of ten minutes. Four tracks can easily handle that volume.
It's the big valley crossings that will be expensive down the road.....Napanee, Moira, Port Hope, Oshawa, Pickering Jct, and the Don Valley all have very large bridges that the freight railways will not hand over.

- Paul

 

[Bureaucromancer]

I believe there's lots of room for an extra track.

Assuming that service is through Peterborough, and doesn't continue along Lake Ontario.

One of the points I am getting at is that intercity access coming down the valley makes sense even if it is a lakeshore service and doesn't pull off the Metrolinx corridor until Pickering

 

[JSF-1]

Not sure if this is truly the right thread for this, but I went down to the Reference Library to get some materials on GO ALRT and thought you guys might like to see some of it (I took the photos with my phone so the quality may not be super good on some images). I'll start with photos from outside of Hamilton (there's a lot of Hamilton related things). Part 1:

 

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Part 2:

 

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Hamilton Section Part 1:

 

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Hamilton Section Part 2:

 

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Hamilton Section Part 3:

 

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Hamilton Section Part 4:

 

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Hamilton Section Part 5: